22
Restlessness drove me out of bed and into my clothes at seven o’clock. With the gun in my coat pocket, I went outside for a look around. The morning was clear, chilly, and empty except for a couple of passing cars. But Adam Manganaris was up; his cabin, like the store, was outfitted with a woodstove because smoke drifted from a squat chimney.
I walked along the driveway, taking my time, and cut over along the side wall of the garage. The first of the windows was too dirty to see through even in daylight, but at the second I found a fairly clear spot on a lower pane. One of the vehicles inside was a dented, rusted pickup that no doubt belonged to the old man. The other, what I could make out of it, had the right lines to be an Olds Cutlass. I couldn’t be sure, though, and I couldn’t see the license plate.
I considered breaking in, but if Adam Manganaris caught me, it would give him a means to get rid of me and end the stalemate. Besides, it didn’t really matter if the car was Dingo’s Olds or some other make that belonged to him. There wouldn’t be anything left in it to tell me where he was. The only way I was going to find that out was from the old man.
Brace him again now? No. Let him stew awhile longer, give him something to think about.
Back at cabin four, I left the key inside and then started the car and let it warm up, revving the engine in case he hadn’t already been alerted. The door to his cabin stayed shut. After four or five minutes, I drove out to the highway and turned west toward Hollister.
It took me a while to find a cafe. Coffee, orange juice, some toast. Two refills on the coffee. And then a leisurely return trip to the Outback Oasis. The whole process took the better part of two hours. It was just nine o’clock when I parked near the store.
Manganaris had already opened for business; the Open sign was prominent in the window. Inside I found him on his stool, reading. Nothing changed in his expression when he looked up and saw me. He seemed just as listless and stoic today.
“So you’re back,” he said.
“You think I’d gone away for good?”
“Didn’t think much about it at all.”
Sure you didn’t. “You’re open early,” I said.
“Nine to nine, every day except Monday.”
“Long hours, unless you have an employee.”
“Just me. At my age, what else am I going to do with my time except read and eat? And I can do those here as well as anywhere.”
I said, “I took a look inside your garage this morning.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Through one of the windows. The car in there belongs to your son.
“Think so, do you?”
“Where is he, Mr. Manganaris?”
No response.
“I’m not going away, you know. Not today or any day until you tell me where he is.”
No response.
“He murdered my client in cold blood, a woman who never did him or anyone else any harm. Forced her to lie facedown on her bed and pressed a gun to the back of her head and executed her. He did the same thing to Jay Cohalan. Would have done the same to me except that the gun jammed. That’s why I won’t go away.”
Emotion, like a ghost image, flickered in his eyes and for an instant changed the shape of his expression. He said, “The bloody gun jammed on you?”
“That’s right. By the grace of God. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here right now. You believe in God?”
He nodded.
“How about justice?”
Another nod.
“Then tell me where Harold is. Put an end to this before it’s too late and he kills somebody else.”
“He won’t kill anyone else,” Manganaris said.
“He might. He’s psychotic, whether you want to believe it or not.”
“I believe it.”
“Well then?”
For almost a minute he looked at me, or through me, without blinking. Then he said in blunted tones, “You win, mister. No point in lying to you anymore. It’s the same as lying to myself.”
“Where is he?”
“I’ll take you to him.”
“Just tell me where I can find him.”
“No. I’ll take you. My way or not at all.”
I weighed it on both sides. If I pushed him, he might change his mind and close off again. And with the old man along, there would seem to be less chance of a violent confrontation. Unless this was some kind of trap. To look at him, frail and dispassionate, with that crippled wrist, you wouldn’t take him for a dangerous or deceitful man. But Dingo was still his flesh and blood. Some men would do anything, anything at all, to protect a loved one.
I said, “You know that I’m armed.”
“Figured you were.”
“I won’t hesitate to use my weapon if I have to.”
“You won’t have to.”
“No?”
“He don’t have his gun anymore.”
“What happened to it?”
“I’ve got it. In my cabin.”
“How’d you get it away from him?”
No reply.
“Is he hurt in some way? Sick?”
“You’ll see when we get where we’re going.”
I would not pry anything more out of him there, that was plain. And I intended to make the trip no matter what the situation; this q. and a. was only prolonging things. I said, “All right,” and Manganaris hoisted himself off the stool and came out from behind the counter.
While he reversed the sign in the window, I took a good look at his clothing: rumpled pair of slacks, white shirt, old, patched pullover sweater. The sweater was tight enough around his thin torso so that a concealed weapon was unlikely. He could have had a hideout gun strapped to his ankle under a pants leg, but that was paranoid thinking. In his arthritic condition, with that bad wrist, how could he hope to get at it and then use it?
Outside, I asked him as he locked up, “How far do we have to go?”
“Not far.”
“I’ll drive, you tell me where.”
We got into my car. He directed me east on the highway, and we rode in silence for a few miles. Manganaris sat bent-backed, eyes straight ahead, hands gripping his knees. In the bright daylight, the knobbed bone on his wrist looked as big as a plum.
Abruptly he said, more to himself than to me, “’Home is the place where.’ ”
“How’s that again?”
“ ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’ ”
“Sounds like a quotation.”
‘“Tis. From a poem by Robert Frost, ‘The Death of the Hired Man.‘ You read Frost?”
“Not since I was a kid.”
“I like him. Makes sense to me, more than a lot of them.”
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. The words ran around inside my head like song lyrics. No, like a chant or an invocation — all subtle rhythm and gathering power. The nature and meaning of the quote were plain enough. Now I knew something more about Adam Manganaris, and something more about his relationship with his son.
We turned off on a county road, traveled another couple of silent miles through sun-struck farmland. Alfalfa and wine grapes, mostly. A private farm road came up on the right; Manganaris told me to turn there. It had once been a good road, unpaved but well graded, but that had been a long time ago. Now there were deep grooves in it and weeds and thistles and tall grass between the ruts. Not used much these days. It led along the shoulder of a bare hill, then up to the crest. From there I could see where it terminated.
The Outback Oasis was a dying place, with not much time left. The farm below was already dead — years dead. The buildings were grouped alongside a shallow creek where willows and cottonwoods grew, in the tuck where two hillocks came together: farmhouse, barn, two chicken coops, a shedlike outbuilding. Skeletons now, all of them, broken and half-hidden by high grass and shrubs and tangles of wild berry vines. Climbing primroses covered part of the house from foundation to roof, bright pink in the sunlight even at this time of year, like a gaudy fungus.